There's No Plan B to Deter N. Korea. Diplomacy has failed, and military action is unlikely. A nuclear test could occur soon.
News Analysis from The Los Angeles Times (5-7-05):
As North Korea accelerates the pace of its nuclear weapons program, the United States and its allies have limited options to prevent one of the world's poorest and most erratic nations from becoming a nuclear power.
In a matter of weeks, faint hope that North Korea might be coaxed into voluntarily dismantling its nuclear facilities through multinational talks has all but evaporated.
The Bush administration appears to have ruled out any kind of preemptive strike on North Korea, which with its conventional artillery alone could inflict massive casualties on neighboring South Korea and the more than 30,000 U.S. troops stationed there. And with diplomacy failing, nonproliferation experts have begun to speak despairingly of the inevitability of a nuclear North Korea.
At the United Nations, any tough measures by the Security Council are likely to be vetoed by China or Russia.
In any event, policy analysts believe it is unlikely that the U.N. has greater clout with the recalcitrant North Korean leader Kim Jong Il than the other participants in the six-nation nuclear talks — the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
The Bush administration is officially pushing for another round of six-party talks.
One of the last, best hopes is that China can persuade North Korea to go back to the negotiations.
[T]he White House has been criticized for refusing to conduct one-on-one talks with the North Koreans, insisting that all contacts remain within the multilateral framework.
"The closer this gets to a crisis stage, the more pressure that will be on the Bush administration to forget the semantics game and talk to them directly," said Scott Snyder, a senior researcher with the Asia Foundation in Washington.
"If they are going to get any deal that sticks, the Americans will have to talk to Kim Jong Il because that's who we're making the deal with. It can't all be done through Beijing by remote control."
The problem is that time could be running out. If North Korea completes a successful nuclear test, the price of dismantlement may well become impossibly high and its neighbors will have to accept it as a nuclear power.
As North Korea accelerates the pace of its nuclear weapons program, the United States and its allies have limited options to prevent one of the world's poorest and most erratic nations from becoming a nuclear power.
In a matter of weeks, faint hope that North Korea might be coaxed into voluntarily dismantling its nuclear facilities through multinational talks has all but evaporated.
The Bush administration appears to have ruled out any kind of preemptive strike on North Korea, which with its conventional artillery alone could inflict massive casualties on neighboring South Korea and the more than 30,000 U.S. troops stationed there. And with diplomacy failing, nonproliferation experts have begun to speak despairingly of the inevitability of a nuclear North Korea.
At the United Nations, any tough measures by the Security Council are likely to be vetoed by China or Russia.
In any event, policy analysts believe it is unlikely that the U.N. has greater clout with the recalcitrant North Korean leader Kim Jong Il than the other participants in the six-nation nuclear talks — the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
The Bush administration is officially pushing for another round of six-party talks.
One of the last, best hopes is that China can persuade North Korea to go back to the negotiations.
[T]he White House has been criticized for refusing to conduct one-on-one talks with the North Koreans, insisting that all contacts remain within the multilateral framework.
"The closer this gets to a crisis stage, the more pressure that will be on the Bush administration to forget the semantics game and talk to them directly," said Scott Snyder, a senior researcher with the Asia Foundation in Washington.
"If they are going to get any deal that sticks, the Americans will have to talk to Kim Jong Il because that's who we're making the deal with. It can't all be done through Beijing by remote control."
The problem is that time could be running out. If North Korea completes a successful nuclear test, the price of dismantlement may well become impossibly high and its neighbors will have to accept it as a nuclear power.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 10:01 AM
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